What Was the Hardest Film to Animate?

Animation is tough. Imagine spending six years to get hair physics right for Tangled, or creating a whole stop-motion film by yourself, or drawing over 100,000 frames without any use of cgi for an anime film. The medium really pushes the limits of both tech and creativity. It's the kind of filmmaking that needs tons of care put into every single frame, whether it's 2D, 3D, or stop-motion. So today, we're looking at what were the most difficult films to animate.

We've picked out 10 films across all forms of animation that really stand out for their incredible detail and effort. These films have done everything from breaking tech barriers to being the first of their kind or just taking existing techniques to a whole new level. We'll also throw in lots of honourable mentions to show just how wild animation can get. But as always, let us know in the comments your pick for the hardest film to animate!

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Sleeping Beauty. Princess Mononoke. Spirited Away. Studio Ghibli. Redline. The Thief and the Cobbler. Disney. Tangled. Toy Story. Avatar. The Nightmare Before Christmas. Blood Tea and Red String. Kubo and the Two Strings. Coraline. Avatar: The Way of Water. James Cameron. The Incredibles. Finding Nemo. Monsters Inc. Frozen. Zootopia. Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Attack on Titan. My Neighbor Totoro. Beauty and the Beast. The Lion King.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:45 - First 2D
02:55 - Sleeping
05:55 - Japanese Studio
07:51 - Anime
09:19 - Decades to Finish
11:51 - Long Hair
14:25 - Pixar
16:58 - CGI
19:20 - Stop Motion
22:05 - Solo Project

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[neilhannan]

My top pick is Loving Vincent 2017. Imagine spending 5 years with 125 artists trained for painting oil 65'000 frames and not getting Recognise for it at the Oscars and getting beated by Zootopia for best animated movie Loving Vincent lose to a furry bait movie 😢

[hipstereagle]

The stories behind the making of Toy Story 2 makes the production of Toy Story 1 look like a walk in the park

[HermitKing]

Animating Jessica Rabbit was very hard for the animators considering they could only do it with one hand.

[sweLeojoelFilms]

As much as I LOVE Pixar and their craft, I'm also sad that 2D-animated movies became a less common sight after Pixar entered the scene. 2D has a more timeless look and if mixed with 3D-assets or environments, it can look amazing. I have a soft spot for movies like The Iron Giant, Atlantis and Treasure Planet for their style and I would love to see more of that today!

[reaganation]

Just to add on for Toy Story: The reason why they choose toys as characters in the first place is beacuse they have to work within the constraints of what their models look like, which are plastic-like and they don't have enough time to fully figure our how render a human that time. This is also why most of the shots of humans only show their feet in the first movie, to avoid as much of their face as possible.

[morbius]

An Italian YouTuber that focuses on animation and films a few years back took unfinished scene from the thief and the cobbler, found a couple of voice actors and tried to replicate what Richard Williams wanted. It’s in Italian, so not many people can watch it, but it’s still interesting

[Blunderman-rlhc]

As a stop motion animator, I can attest to the difficulty involved in such a meticulous craft. Glad to see "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on here. That film really creeped me out as a kid, which, ironically, helped inspire me to do stop motion animation. I grew to be fascinated by how this form of animation is so realistic that it's naturally creepy.

[crestofhonor]

My top pick is Theif and the Cobbler. Some of the shots are so insane in quality I don't think many people realize how difficult to animate some of them are. One of them is the scene where the camera follows a journey through the mountains and into the main villain's home. The fact that it's shot like a real camera moving through a real environment with so much background animation is insanely difficult. It is very hard to preserve volume in a 3D space for 2D characters but to do it for that long is insane. Other things like the War Machine are also incredible.

[CloverDoesJunkStopMotion]

The animators of Who Framed Roger Rabbit had a hard time animating and were hard animating

[Celebrian]

God, first seasons of Attack on Titan were propably the best animation in serialised anime and looking for the new ones, I miss it so much.

[danny]

Idc what anyone says Roger Rabbit will always be one of the best animated films. Obviously it’s mixed media but you’re working with 2D characters in a 3D space and had to twist and turn the characters to the camera. That team was insane.

Plus the famous bumping the lamp which is known as the biggest feats in animation history

[santiagocardozo]

Isn't there a Russian animator who has been developing his film for 40 years?

[ralfm.schroder]

I’ve missed the 2004, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow here.
Where only the Actors and what they have in their hands were real, the rest was completely CGI, but with the look of a 1930‘s movie.
Absolute breathtaking and one of my only seven 100% movies.
Thank you for mentioning at least Moana, the other of the only two animated movies on my 100% range.
Animated movies and series are one of my most beloved style of production, which I could watch anytime.

[SweewzStudios]

All of these films are difficult but they are leagues behind the difficulty of ' The Overcoat '.

[colincolin]

All of these films were so hard to make. But my favourite has to be Wallace and gromit. Especially the older ones. The penguin in the bottle 😂

[Kolukie]

The thumbnail would be impossible, cause you only have 1 hand to work with.

[darkstarmoonshadow]

Snow White had to be one of the hardest in a top 10 list due to budget and two scenes in general; the forest nightmare and the Queens transformation

[Hannah-tz]

The music video for “Money for Nothing “ had two of the first CGI characters ever made! Also the music video for “Take on Me” was also amazing

[mom]

The thumbnail of the video makes me hardest

[AnyaC.Rawlins-vzdl]

I heard that the hardest scene in “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was Jack opening the Christmas door.